Re: The problem

On 28 Mar 2013, at 14:02, hibbsa wrote:

>
> The principles produced by the philosophy are immune to all forms  
> forms
> of criticism involving data, evidence, real-world-events  
> contradiction,
> and so on. The only acceptible criticism is heavily constrained and
> entirely in the hands of the philosophy itself, and there are a host  
> of
> rules and priorities that aren't made explicit to people seeking to  
> make
> a criticism, which often completely neutralize their whole category of
> criticism in the eyes of the adherents of the philosopy, effectively
> making the criticism a pointless pursuit.
>
> For example, look at the debate with Steve Push over in BoI. To all
> intents and purposes I think he won that debate on the terms he was  
> led
> to believe could result in a genuine criticism being landed, should he
> prevail. But that wasn't the case. Deutsch, Temple, Forrester and  
> others
> engaged Push on his chosen terms, but in reality never had any  
> intention
> whatsoever of conceding a major criticism of their philosophy.
>
> The reason was that, if they lost on the implicitly agreed terms, they
> could simply back things off to making ever more impractical demands  
> for
> 'source' material such as specific details of the experiments to be
> provided by Push. Then if that didn't work, arguments could follow  
> about
> scientism.
>
> Then if that didn't work arguments could follow that ultimately asked
> whether he had a better over all explanation of epistemology and
> science. And if he didn't, then by the rules of the philosophy, the
> philosophy would stand.
>
> That's the reality on the ground of how the philosophy works.  
> Criticism
> is effectively massively protected against in explicit ways that  
> aren't
> made clear. No effort is made to direct criticism to key points that
> need to be broken. It just doesn't happen.
>
> Besides everything else, there's an issue of integrity. Is it honest,
> intellectually, to tell someone you are open to criticism, and then
> engage with them in the criticism they want to make, implicitly
> indicating that if they can establisht their criticism you will accept
> it in good faith, when actually that is not true.
>

A good method consists in changing the vocabulary from time to time.  
It prevents the useless vocabulary discussions, and many other  
rhetorical tricks. It helps keeping the scientific attitude on the  
genuine issues.
The problem is that there is a sort of vindication of abandoning rigor  
in the philosophical domain, which matches the institutional lack of  
rigor in theology that we live since a very long time. People defends  
fields, not idea. Science is till prehistorical, and diplomats are  
still eliminated, and inter-disciplinarily research is still a pious  
wish.

I think that acceptance of criticism, like free-exam, might be a  
protagorean virtue. Those who defend publicly such virtues put  
themselves in a way preventing them to be able to apply them. Perhaps.

Bruno





>
> 

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/





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